Nightmare in the Tune of V
by Somnambulista
Summary: Lamb's POV. Midway through Season 2; Veronica starts slipping off of the deep end, and it's up to Lamb to keep her stable. DoVe
1. Nightmare in the Tune of V

I do not own these characters. This takes place towards the end of season 2, when Veronica is having nightmares. This is from Lamb's point of view.

When Keith Mars calls me, as a general rule, I avoid the it for as long as I possibly can. We used to be friends, but that was a long time ago. Now I've earned his enmity, and that of his daughter, Veronica. Veronica... There's a photo in my desk of the two of us. It was just before Lilly had been killed; she'd come down to the station and Sacks was in the picture-takin' mood. She wrapped her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. Hell, that's the first smile I can remember having in a long time that wasn't insincere or smug. I was looking at that photo when Sacks came in and pointed to the phone.

"Listen Lamb, he won't quit callin'. I think somethin's actually wrong," he said.

I exhaled slowly through my nose, sitting up straight with some indignation. I slammed the drawer shut. There was no lock on it; a lock was like a neon beacon that said EAT AT JOE'S to Veronica. I'd learned that much. She thought I was stupid, but really, I was just smart enough to "subcontract" work to her without her knowing it. Then, I'd take the credit. Everyone was happy. Right?

But the crash. The crash was driving me nuts. Nobody could figure it out. Our department was overworked and underpaid – I would pull 50k a year, and people were blowing up buses? Bullshit. Sacks motioned to the phone again, and I sighed more loudly than before and picked up the phone.

"Mr. Mars, how can I help you?" I sang, the acid tangible in my voice.

"Don – forget about all of that. Listen, it's Veronica. I can't get hold of her. She hasn't been sleeping well and I'm afraid she's done something stupid. I don't know what, but I'm in Dallas on a lead. Can you please check on her? Just, make sure she's okay. Please."

The desperate please fell on deaf ears. "Keith, I'm sure she's fine. She's probably with whatever... flavour of the week. Why don't you call the Echolls kid? Hopefully she's still alive," I said snidely. I don't know why the subject of Veronica inspired such anger in me, but it did. It made me venomous, and almost rabid. Every time I opened my mouth, the words just fell out in rapid fire.

Keith was quiet for a second, and then he spoke again. "I thing something has happened," he said. He spoke very, very slowly and clearly. His voice shook – with fear or anger, I couldn't tell which. "**Please**."

"UgggghhhFINE," I barked. "Fine. But I swear to God, Mars, if she's playing at detective and just blowing off your calls, I'm going to find something to arrest her for and I'm going to bring her in," I threatened.

"At least then I'll know she's safe," he said. The line went dead.

I banged my fist down on my desk and sat for a moment, very still, contemplating with wide, tired eyes my empty cup of coffee that sat before me. I just needed a sixty second break from reality, to refresh and reboot. It was ten o'clock at night. I'd been there since five in the morning. I wanted to go home. I lived on the other side of town than the direction Keith was begging me to go.

Fuck. My. Life. I was about to go and play babysitter for Miss Veronica Mars.


	2. Cracked

I do not own these characters. This takes place towards the end of season 2, when Veronica is having nightmares. This is from Lamb's point of view.

02

I changed before I went over there. I really didn't feel keen on wearing that uniform any longer than I had to today. Usually I liked the attention, but it was late, I was tired, and I wanted to go home and take a shower and go to bed. The entire drive there I contemplated how tightly I was going to wrap my hands around her neck when I found her on the couch eating candy and staring like an idiot at Spice World or whatever the hell it was she watched.

The drive was shorter than I expected, if only because I was literally doing twice the speed limit to get there. Who makes residential limits 40, anyways? Not me. When I pulled into the apartment complex, the tacky neon sign made my tired eyes burn a little with how bright it was. I muttered various noises of disgust, and then stepped out of my truck, slamming the door. I didn't care how loud I was being. And, speaking of loud:

"VERONICA!"

I cupped my hands over my mouth, yelling up into the center of the complex like a howling wolf shouting at the moon. I did it two or three times, and then began my ascent of the stairs. I could see lights turning on, and one elderly man opened his door and shook his fist at me.

"I'm so sorry," I hissed. "The Mars family in that apartment over there told me to yell since they're hard of hearing," I told him, making an 'I've got it' motion with my hands. He said something that I interpreted as incredibly insulting in Spanish and slammed his door. That prompted other lights to turn on. Oh yeah, I'm an asshole, and I know it – but hey, it comes with the territory.

When I got to the door of the Mars apartment, I leaned against the doorframe and did the "cop knock". You know the one, bottom of the fist at the center of the door, making it reverberate. There was no way at all that Veronica, if she were to be inside, would not hear that knock.

Or maybe there was.

I frowned and walked to the edge of the pathway. No, I'd definitely seen her car sitting out there. I turned on the heel of my boot and went back, resorting to more slamming on the door. I couldn't help it; now I was getting pissed off.

"Come on, Veronica! Open the door!" I demanded. I tried to sound scary and authoritative, but I knew that it wouldn't do much to draw her out if she was absorbed in something. I saw a flicker of something moving inside, like a body passing in front of a light. I heard a loud thump, which was the unmistakable and very distinct sound of a body hitting the floor.

So maybe I overreacted. "Veronica?" I couldn't help it. My voice gets weird when I'm nervous and shouting. I drew my off-duty weapon, counted to three, and kicked. I nailed the door right above the dead bolt. The door flew open and hit the wall with a bang, and the sudden rush of wind caused a bunch of papers to blow across the floor of the Mars living room.

Or... not papers. Photos. Blown up photos of the victims of the bus accident, plus more students and other members of the community – some affluent, some not very affluent. And Veronica was on the floor, headphones in, a white iPod next to her. She was sitting Indian style, her hair fisted in her hands and her elbows on her knees, and she was rocking back and forth. And she was crying. Bawling, in fact. Talking to herself, saying the – the craziest things.

"I can't find them. I can't find them! It wasn't my FAULT. I'm trying so hard, but I just need more time, I'm trying, and I don't understand what you're trying to tell me. I just want to sleep – FUCK, can't you just LET ME SLEEP!" And then she'd dissolve into... jibberish. Words, dates, names, times – I didn't understand any of it, but I understood one thing: V had cracked.

I holstered my gun and knelt down, taking her by the shoulders to try and still her spastic rocking. "Veronica?" I said, my voice crossing my clenched teeth harshly. She didn't even seem to register that I was there. Slowly, I reached forward and pulled her headphones out, and for a second, she just kept right on talking, going on like I wasn't even there. Then she stopped. Her head snapped up and she focused in with those big blue eyes of hers.

She tried to steel her face, like she knew that this was not something I was supposed to see.

"...Veronica?" I asked again. I softened my tone, tried to – tried to remember how I spoke to her before, when I didn't hate her.

The carefully cold and neutral gaze she had fixed on her face cracked very suddenly, and she choked out another sob. She let go of her hair to cover her mouth, and started shaking her head. Her hands were pressed against her face so hard she looked like she might try to suffocate herself, but she was trying to muffle the crying, to protect herself. I'd only ever seen her cry this hard one other time.

"_I've not got a shred of evidence to work with here, but that really doesn't matter to your family, does it?"_

I'd been pretty mad that night in particular, about a lot of things. The way I'd handled Veronica's rape allegations was... terrible. I told myself she was lying, or that she deserved what she got for trying to support the man who was ruining the Kane family – my old mentor. I'd wanted her to suffer, to know pain. I don't know why, truthfully, but I know I did, and I know that sitting there in that living room while she fell apart at the seams, I wanted to take it all back. I'd never seen her run herself so ragged on anything before.

"Stop, stop," I cooed, trying to calm her down. She was still crying, shaking her head at me. She made a sweeping gesture once she let go of her face, and then shrugged.

"Please, deputy," she begged. "Please, tell me where I am supposed to look for the answers. They're in my head and I can't get them out, and I can't shut them up," she explained, her voice faltering to an unusually high and panicked octave. And she still called me _deputy_.

"I don't know," I said softly. Christ, I was trying not to set her off. "But I think we need to go lay down somewhere for a little while, okay? Let me take you to relax, and then we can try to ask again later." God. I didn't know what the hell I was saying; ask what, and to whom? I just knew that this girl was my responsibility and she was on the verge of being mentally bankrupt if I didn't intervene and cool her down.

"But – no, I need to keep looking," she whined. She was already allowing me to help her up; I don't think she knew where she was at that moment. We literally could have been on the moon.

"Sweetheart, when did you last sleep?" I asked, trying to keep my voice down and soothing.

She looked down at her trembling fingers, and then back up at me, eyes wide. "F-f-Friday," she said. "Last Friday," she amended half a second later, trying to add clarification. Now, I've pulled some all-nighters in my day, but she had a full school week, plus work, plus I'd been harping on her for this or that, plus now the weight of the wreck? No wonder she'd cracked.

"Come on, let's just get you into bed," I said, trying to coax her. "Please, Veronica. For me?" I don't know why I even said that; she hated me. She was more likely _not_ to go lay down now, actually. Fantastic.

"Okay, deputy. For you," she whispered in accord.

Also fantastic. I could accept being wrong in this one occasion.


	3. Attack Attack

03

She was laying down, finally, but God damned it was a frightful sleep. She kept trying to get up, and I kept finding ways to keep her in that bed. She'd say things like, "But I need to study," or "I'm thirsty." She'd do it in this whining, cute voice that made me want to either stab her or do precisely what she asked when she asked it. When I'd finally gotten her back down for the fourth or fifth time, I sat down on the edge of her bed and put my head in my hands.

It came over me like a rush. Suddenly I realized why it was I hated Veronica so much. She had this... this way of manipulating people. Not in the sense that she did it maliciously or that she was even aware of it, but it was everything about her very essence that was manipulative. She could have you wrapped around her finger with a smile, or a word, and when she really focused, she could have you giving her everything you had, whether you knew you were doing it or not. It rendered people powerless, and for someone like me, that was not a good feeling.

I'd always hated people who could manipulate like that. My father was the type. Charismatic and full of spark. It was just behind closed doors when that would change, and I'd get the brunt of it. Nobody ever believed me, and my mom was always too scared to talk – or too comfortable with her lifestyle. Good ol' 90909. When things got rough, my mother would hit the scotch and my father would hit me. I'd taken it until he was old enough to move. I was able to get a scholarship to a college in Texas playing football, but I'd sustained a knee injury and had to come back. Then, there was the police academy... and now, this.

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes for a moment to think. I hoped my fluttering, random thoughts would fall back down into some semblance of order and I could leave. When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't sure how much time had passed. My neck was incredibly stiff, and Veronica was dead asleep. I needed to get up and get the hell out of there, and I did so as quietly as possible.

When I got outside, I pulled my cell phone out its case and called Keith. He answered on half of the first ring, causing me to grimace a little. If I ever cared about anyone or anything that much, I would literally kill myself.

"Is she okay? Is she alive?" he barked into the phone.

I cleared my throat, leaning against the railing that lined the walkway. "Yeah, Keith. She's alive. I don't know about _okay_ though – probably not the choice of words I'd use. More like... complete psychotic episode," I said, my words carefully pronounced.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

I ran my hands through my short hair and groaned. "Let's just say I think she needs to sleep more. I'll... figure it out before you get back."

"Figure what out? Don, no, don't do anything. Just – leave her there. Or, no, watch her – but leave her alone." He was flustered and confused, and it translated well in his voice.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Listen. _Keith._ I think I've got this under control. I'm going to go back inside, so don't call me back or you're going to wake Veronica up, and then I'll smother her with her unicorn pillow," I threatened. I hung up and turned my ringer off, then went back inside.

I turned around to walk back inside, but the blonde zombie was standing in the doorway, staring at me. She startled me so badly that I hesitated, and the bitch grabbed for my gun before I had time to say anything. Luckily, I stopped her before she could get anywhere, grabbing her wrist and clamping down on it. Hard.

"Listen, Nancy Drew, my sympathy stops for you when you go homicidal, so do me a favour and calm yourself," I warned her, my tone low. She glared at me, her eyes flicking over my face like she was trying to determine whether or not she was going to test me. I felt her hand relax, and I kept my own locked down for an extra few seconds, just to prove my point.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. She folded her arms tightly and leaned against the doorframe. It was hard to read her when she was so tired. She seemed coherent, but her voice reflected that she didn't even know what had been going on when I'd first arrived. "Why... why you?"

"What do you mean 'Why you'? Who else would it be?" I paused, narrowing my eyes. "Wait, you're serious?" I responded loudly. I opened my mouth to continue with the volume, but then closed it quickly and made an irritated noise. "Inside, now. Go."

She held her hands up and turned to go back inside, while I followed her. I closed the door behind us and leaned against it with my head down. Clearing thoughts. Clearing thoughts. Okay, go. "Veronica, I think you're losing your fucking mind. You really need, like, a vacation or something. Seriously. When I came in, you were surrounded by a whole mess of pictures, and notes, and just _shit_ about the crash and you were talking to yourself. And – _what_ is on that iPod you keep cuddling?' I demanded.

I reached out and snatched it out of her ear, but all I could hear was some weird gibberish talkshow bullshit. "You don't make any sense, Veronica. Just when I think you have it all together, you go all nutty on me and I remember you're just a little kid." I was so pissed off at myself for falling for her little cute and innocent act earlier that I just locked my proverbial jaws and went for her throat. Fucking bitch. She always did this. She always had this way of making you believe that you were the only person in the world, and then when she had what she wanted, she'd act like it never happened.

The expression on her face went from groggy to semi-coherent and then to seriously upset. I knew if I kept hitting her, she couldn't latch on like she had earlier and start messing with my head. I was trying to stay on the defensive, and the only way I knew how to do that was to just... attack..

"Okay, you know what? You're – cracked, really. You're alive, I've fulfilled my end of the bargain, and now I'm going home and I'm going to bed. Good night." I turned around with my hands held up, physically indicating I was done with the situation. I got to the doorknob when the sobbing start.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, you made me cry. Again. Are you happy? I don't understand!" Her voice went shrill again, and she put her hands up and began moving them as she spoke, emphasizing with gestures where the words were louder. "You used to LIKE me! You used to enjoy having me around! And then you just forgot I existed, and then suddenly I'm in your crosshairs all the time! Please, just tell me what I did!"

I slammed my forehead against the door, groaning. "Please, shut up," I begged, turning back around to look at her. "Just stop talking."

She suddenly flared to life, grabbing the first thing within arm's reach and hurling it at me. I didn't see what it was, but I heard it come whiffing by my head. It smashed into the front door and exploded into a few hundred pieces, sending shit everywhere. I reached up with my left hand and touched my face, where I felt something suddenly warm and smelling of copper.

"You just threw a glass at my head," I managed, as calmly as I could. As much as I hated to admit it, that put some things into perspective. I'd never seen Veronica act violently – not like that. Why was it that her sudden violent outburst had me more willing to listen than all of times she'd tried to just sit down and explain things to me? Right, because Veronica's action then had been on impulse. That's how I knew it was real. It wasn't something carefully calculated.

Keep hitting her off guard, and she'll keep spitting out the truth, because she can't think fast enough to lie.

She just stood there and stared at me, her mouth agape (again), hands trembling. "Please just stop," she pleaded, trying to manage not to continue sobbing. "Please? Please, Donnie?"

"Well, Mr. Mars, I think I broke her," I said, widening my eyes for emphasis as I said aloud the only thing I would be able to tell Keith when we next spoke. Not going to be a good day, that. "Veronica, if I have to get stitches for this, I _am_ holding you responsible."

She came at me again, and I swear to God I thought she was going to throw something else. Instead, she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. And cue Donald Lamb's absolute and total LACK of any good or witty or demeaning or heartbreaking response.

"Ah..." I stammered. Yeah, I was the one stammering now, evidently.

"Please, just stop – just stop talking and just pretend it's like it used to be," she begged, her voice slightly muffled.

"Veronica, it didn't 'used to be'," I began, but she cut me off.

"It did used to be," she sobbed. "When you cared. Before people started dying and you started being some stupid bad-ass Sheriff whatever that always has to be in control all the time," she added. I could feel her shaking against me, and as much as I didn't want her to try and go for my gun again (although honestly I could attribute that to her waking up and having no idea what was going on), it was hard to resist the urge to just hold her.

"Bad-Ass Sheriff? And why can't you just be _normal_?" I hissed. She was confusing me. Too much shit going on in my head, too many conflicting thoughts. Close the eyes. Sort the thoughts. Let them flutter like leaves, land into neat stacks of paper...

When I opened my eyes, she was staring up at me, her hands holding my face. Her thumb dragged so lightly over the blood that it almost tickled, and I flinched.

"Just tell me why you're so hot and cold, Don. Please." She fixed her gaze on me, hoping for an answer, and honestly, she wasn't going to get one.

The answer was because she needed to be stronger. Somehow I had been enlisted with this task; maybe I'd handed it down to myself. It finally really clicked, all these years, all the horrible things I'd said to her. It was to toughen her up. She kept trying to find some balance in the world between good and bad, and I was trying to show her that there was and would never be any middle ground. Not for long, anyways.

"I'm sorry I threw the glass," she said. She sounded strained. "I couldn't think of a fast effective method to get you to stop talking long enough for anything I said to sink in." She looked sheepish. "I didn't think it was going to hit you."

"Yeah, well, next time, stick with a pillow, okay?" I asked, my brow furrowed. Christ. So much for telling Keith I had this handled. She took my hand and lead me to the kitchen table, where she proceeded to pull out a medical kit.


	4. Speak Frankly

I do not own these characters. This takes place towards the end of season 2, when Veronica is having nightmares. This is from Lamb's point of view.

04

I winced when she dabbed my cheek with the alcohol-soaked cotton ball. "Veronica - "

She shook her head. "Don't, Donnie. It's my fault," she sighed. "Look left," she instructed softly, placing her small hand under my chin and turning my head a little.

"Oh, no. I never said it wasn't your fault," I corrected her, laughing. "I was going to tell you that I'm not driving home now, so you'd better find me some provisions." I was tired, and now it was late, and I was not driving the hour back to my house.

"Oh?" she asked, her brows raising. "Huh." She made a thoughtful little noise and set the alcohol bottle down. She propped her elbows up on the table and looked at me, with the faintest hint of a smile on her face. I could never determine why she was so moody, or why her mood-swings happened so violently. Bi-polar? I didn't know.

"Why are you smiling?" I asked. I touched my cheek lightly where she'd applied some butterfly stitches. I'd have to look in a mirror, but they didn't seem like they were too bad. I guess one more scar wouldn't kill me, although I didn't really relish the idea of having something on my body that she could lay claim to. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I took it straight to the gutter, and I rolled my eyes at myself.

"Because," she said hesitantly. "You came all the way here to check on me, and now I'm the one taking care of you." She began putting the items back into the first-aid kit while she waited for my rebuff.

"If by taking care of me, you mean taping the giant gaping wound on my face open that _you_ caused, then yes, I'd say that you are crafty, Veronica Mars, and my but how the tables have turned." I gave her a doubtful look, and then leaned back in my chair a little. Thirty minutes ago, I'd been ready to throw her through a wall, and I'm pretty sure she'd have tried the same on me. Now, I didn't know.

"I said I was sorry, Lamb," she said with a frown. "But if you really want to go back and listen to the screaming match, I'd say you deserved it. Can I ask you something, and can you answer me honestly, now that we're both calmed down? And can you do it without getting all fired back up again, because I don't have many good glasswares left?" She stood and walked to the counter as she spoke, putting the kit back on top of the fridge where it belonged. She had to sit up on the counter to reach, which I thought was hilarious, but I said nothing. She glanced over her shoulder and opened one of the brown cabinets behind her, then pulled out a bottle of Scotch from out within the construct. She focused her blue eyes on my own, and tilted her head. "Will this help?"

"...Scotch is an old-man drink, V," I said, an unamused expression on my face.

"So you'll have a glass with ice, right?" she countered, sliding down and bringing two old-fashioned glasses with her. She hit them both on the ice maker and then poured a very, very modest serving into what was her own, and slightly more into mine.

"Wait, so did you just call me an old man?" I asked incredulously, one of my brows arched as high as it would go. I took the glass as she offered it anyways, and had a sip. Maybe it'd been a while since I'd drank anything other than beer, but that shit burned on the way down.

"I did," she nodded. "An old man who I can hopefully get tipsy enough to give me answers without reducing me to tears," she said pointedly. "Cheers!" And with that broad grin on her face, she took a sip of her drink. I knew which smile she wore; it was the most insincere out of the array she displayed throughout a day or a week's time. That was the one I was most accustomed to, and it instantly made me distrust her and raise my hackles regarding where the conversation was going.

I cleared my throat and ignored her presence for a few minutes. She managed to deflect being made uncomfortable and didn't seem to take a hint that I didn't want to answer her questions, especially when she very audibly scooted her chair closer to mine. She placed her arms out on the counter, palms flat down, and tilted her head.

"I'll tell you what I know so far if you'll just... give me something, Donnie. A sliver of the past, an instance where you recall marking me for death – something. Please?" Her tone of voice was sincere now; I could tell, because it was much softer than the one she usually used. She also wasn't smiling; a good sign.

"Okay," I said. I closed my tired eyes and took a deep breath, and then opened them again. "This doesn't leave this room, and I don't care if it doesn't make sense to you, Mars. I'll explain it once. After that, the questions stop. Okay?"

She nodded rapidly, and set down an already-empty glass, except for melted ice at the bottom of it. I took another sip of my own, and waited a moment for it to go down. Yeah, Scotch was a bad choice, and I wouldn't be doing it again.

"You had a crush on me when you were younger. You knew that, I knew that. Hell, even Lilly knew that," I said with a laugh. "I looked up to your dad. And then when he started going after the Kane family, I just... You both do the same thing my old man does. You could charm the robes right off of Jesus if you thought it'd get you somewhere. You're both tenacious. You bite down into something, and you don't let go for nothin', with no regard to who it's gonna destroy. And look, I was right. The Kanes were hiding something, yes, but they didn't kill Lilly. Neither did Abel Koontz, and we see how all of that turned out."

"Yeah, but there was more animosity with the Kane family surrounding that, Lamb," she said to me.

I waved her off. "I know. I know about the supposed paternity, about your little digs at Celeste, about the patent software, Amelia deLongpre. I know about all of it That wasn't really my point though, and now I've gone and gotten side-tracked."

I paused, trying to retrace my footsteps. Close the eyes, breathe deep. God, I was fucking tired. The Scotch did it. I opened my eyes again, and she was just staring at me. She looked like a cat; a beautiful, blonde-haired blue-eyed Siamese cat, waiting for me, the goldfish, to fall asleep so that she could rip my throat out. I narrowed my eyes at her a little and sat up more straight in the chair.

We'd see who the goldfish was later.

"Right. My point, Veronica, is that when that happened, you changed. Yes, I realize it was because of all the shit going on, but what I'm getting at is that you crossed the line between being someone's friend and using the shit out of them to suit your own purposes. And you're so pretty and so smart that you may not realize you're doing it _all_ of the time, but I would be hard-pressed to believe you didn't know you did it some of the time. You have a certain tone that your voice takes when you're talking to a mark. You've done it to me so many times, I forgot what you really sounded like – there are instances where I hear it, but it all blends together now so much that honestly, if you said that the world was going to end tomorrow and showed me proof, I might think you photoshopped it," I admitted.

She made a small choking noise.

"You said honest," I replied, holding my hands up. "Look, Veronica. Half of the time I'm pissed off at you because I know you're trying to use me. The other half I'm pissed off because no matter what happens to you, you still insist on trying to even the playing field. You can't accept the fact that sometimes bad shit just happens. There's no karma, no retribution. Sometimes the world is just a bad place. It freaks me out to think that you could waste your life believing that there's some kinder, gentler version of life out there."

There was that noise again. She remained silent for a while, and then cleared her throat. "Well. I'm glad to know you think I've been playing you for the last three years with every conversation we've had. I'm also happy to know that you think I'm just some silly dreamer who's going to be upset when I find out there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Thanks for the vote of fucking confidence," she said. She pushed her chair out abruptly and threw her glass in the sink. It didn't break, thank God.

"Blankets and pillows are in the hall closet. I'm going back to bed," she groused. She turned the corner to her room and slammed her door.

Great. "Nice move, Lamb," I said to myself, stretching my back in the chair. Why is it that when someone asks for the truth, the more they act like it won't bother them, the more it bothers them? Why do people do that? If someone finds out, could they please let me know?

I pushed back out of the chair and went to her room, tapping on the door lightly.

"Go away," she said from beneath the blankets.

"Veronica, open the door," I said. I really wasn't standing out here all night, and she had about two seconds before I knocked that thing off of the hinges. "We had a deal. You cut my face up, so you have to tell me what I want to know, now."

There was total silence, and then I heard shuffling as she kicked across the floor in her giant bear claw slippers. She opened the door up wide and turned around, making a 'whatever' sort of gesture with her arms before flopping back down onto her bed.

I sat down on the edge of it, where I had been before, and looked over at her. She was carefully not making eye contact with me, and that was going to annoy the piss out of me. "Oh, knock it off," I snapped. "You asked. Don't ask if you can't handle the truth. Don't you tell your clients that?" I demanded. I was getting mad all over again.

She seemed to sense this, and reached out for my leg, sitting up more. She placed her hand palm-down on my leg, just above my knee, and offered me a half-smile. It was forced, but it wasn't the usual sneer she gave me, so I'd take it.

"You're right. I guess it's my turn."


End file.
